i'll be interested in Nobby's answer, he's probably waiting for me to go first again, the incrutable devil. I would NOT throw in a "workout." I'd do my hills and use the race as an early indicator of where I was. If you were really looking to do well on Saturday, i.e. if there is money on the line, I might be inclined to do just one hill workout and be fresh. But the race fits nicely with that two hill sessions and a time trial pattern Arthur had me on.
Again, if you want to follow the Lydiard type program, you will peak gradually. You would pick the race(s) and count back. Is the race at the end of April THE race or is it the beginning of the races? That sounds rather early... Suppose you want to "peak" the second week of June; even being at full sharpness in April would be too early. Of course, you can "peak" at the end of April and try to hold the peak till June but that all depends on your background of training; that's full 7-weeks. It also depends on whether you'd be racing every week or once in a while.
Either way, you have already done 4 weeks of hill phase; you need to move on (missing 1 weeks, again, means next nothing). As HRE stated, however, it's silly to "taper" or "peak" for this Saturday. You seem to already understand that you're not sharp so you cannot expect the best performance. There's nothing wrong with using some races as a part of training. You just have to understand what that particular race stands in the scheme of whole program. With your calf problem (you're the one who said you have tight calf problem, right?), it might even be better to do time trial / tempo type of sharpening instead of conventional intervals. Either way, you need to lay out which races you would like to participate and which races you actually would like to do well and shuffle day-to-day training accordingly.
One other word of causiton would be; you realize once you stard doing more exacting workouts like repetitions and time trials and some races, your long run should be at very easy effort. There's nothing wrong with pushing the effort during conditioning but to continue to do so once you start hard anaerobic training can be fatal. 14 miles sounds okay but, if you do it at 6:20 pace, it's only about 1:30 or less. Slow down a bit and go for an easy 1:45~2hour jog.
How did I do, HRE? By the way, wouldn't that be "inscrutable" instead of "incrutable"? Am I not the dumb foreigner? ;o) I love it when I correct your language...
[quote]Nobby wrote:
How did I do, HRE? By the way, wouldn't that be "inscrutable" instead of "incrutable"? Am I not the dumb foreigner? ;o) I love it when I correct your language
[quote]Nobby wrote:
How did I do, HRE? By the way, wouldn't that be "inscrutable" instead of "incrutable"? Am I not the dumb foreigner? ;o) I love it when I correct your language
No. "Incrutable" is a new word I invented to describe you. I've never been able to "crute" you, largely because I don't know what that is. But I'm right.
HRE:
You mean, I'm "cute"?
Nobby and HRE have pretty much answered your query and I am about 3 days behind being laid low with a flu bug. !!
HRE mentioned one hill workout. I did something similar to this with a young athlete back in December when we were preparing for an 800m in our National Schools event. We had done no speed work at all just Time trials, Longer "interval" runs (4 to 6 X 800)and hills. All of this on trails and forest roads.
6 days out from the meet we did our last Hill workout. The kid ran a pb in the Final of 1:56 (he was 16 at the time and just turned 17 last week)
We are doing similar work at present and just on Sunday he ran a half marathon in the forest in 1:34. Considering there is 11 hills in this half marathon it was a good run. HRE has run the first hill of that race so he can vouch for jow tough 11 would be !!!
Thsi weekend the same kid will attempt a 400/800 double at our regional champs.
We have done no "fast" work at all.
Apologies for my crap spelling in my flu state !
Sounds like we are in a similar state of training other than the race distances. I was thinking about doing my afternoon run tomorrow on a route that has a dirt road hill about 500 meters and doing the hill twice and calling it good. Then I was wondering about Wednesday doing a six mile run and then 4 x 300 at about 85% effort just to get some turnover in. Other than that just running easy the rest of the week. Sound good?
I would not bother with the 4 X 300. You have a longish season ahead. A workout we do if we are racing early season (Racing Saturday) on a Wednesday is just a 400m.
We warmup for about 20 minutes easy running, do our strides, stretches etc (Whatever your warmup routine is) run the 400 as fast as possible, then jog 20 minutes to recover. The rest of the week is just easy running.
Another workout we do would probably be some "easy" strides over 100 to 150m. Or as Arthur put in his schedules "fast relaxed running"
Bottom line is you find what suits you.
Nobby's advice about working back from when you want to run well is most important here.
Arthur used to talk to me about going into races 'undertrained, especially in early season. You would be undertrained for this race but the race would help.
Just for references sake, if you ever have the plane fare, go to Rotorua and get Kim to show you this hill. To have a race that includes it is truly amazing.
As to the session you're thinking of, I'm completely with Kim. The hill part sounds fine. If you want to work on some turnover, stay with something that won't generate a lactic acid buildup, i.e., something that will take less than 20 seconds per rep, e.g. something in the 100-150 yard range.
I was just reading something that Ron Clarke wrote where he said that the only trackwork he did from 1965-70 was a session where he did very short reps like that.
I'm not necessarily saying that 4X300m is bad (though I do agree with Kim that it's a bit too premature now) but I really do think Americans love intervals/repetitions waaaay too much. I was talking to coach Koide the other day and he said that one of his young girls would do something like 20k run at solid effort followed by 1000m at up tempo pace. What happened? She just won the women's division of Tokyo Citizen's marathon in 2:31 as a first timer 18-years-old. Sure, talented. But every Japanese coach would tell you that American youngsters have 5 times more physical talent than most Japanese youngsters. For every Takahashi or noguchi, the US hould have 5 or 6 of them. Think about it. It was like that in the 80s. We had Seko. US had Shorter, Rodgers, Salazar, Beardsley, Mayer, Sandval... Oh, that's right. We had Soh brothers but they are too much alike... (you didn't know they switched at half way mark... Just kidding!)
why would the 3x400 not be a good idea/ be premature? all 3 of you agree that it probably wouldnt be a great thing to do, and im just wondering the reason behind this.
The workout J-hill mentioned was 4 X 300. I like Nobby, don't have a major problem with it either. But it could elicit an anaerobic response that maybe is too close to the event. I am not sure because I don't know the guy at all so was operating off what was said here, so I am playing safe.
Many people on here ask for advice and we can only operate on what people tell us.
To go back to my comment earlier it is better to go into the race Undertrained and to quote my old Coach Bill Baillie "Fresh" than go into it a little "overcooked".
I am talking from 8,000,miles away and have no idea where J-hill lives or trains. I maybe totally off the wall with my suggestions but if I learned anything from Arthur it was plain old Common sense. Don't go crazy on the "interval stuff"
Cheers
To support Kim a step further, and to use the example perhaps "today's" people might listen... Nic Bideau, Craig Mottram's coach, told me that Craig was on the verge of "overcooked" going into last year's World Cup. He cut back his "intervals" and took it easy. Did do some sharp stuff right before, but actually cut back a bit. "Why keep cooking when the bread is done in the oven?" is how he put it.
Just remember this comment from reading Kim's post.
I know that by going on a message board and asking for training adice is a bit of a gamble. I fully understand that if I really wanted great coaching I would work with someone who knows me best and has the ability to at least watch me workout once in a while. However, as I mentioned from the start I was very impressed in your responses to the creater of this thread. Your responses were well thought out and given with care. This is why I asked for some advice in a time where I have been doing the most training with the least amount of direction. It makes sense to not start doing intervals as this is something that once you start you typically have to continue doing. I planned on starting with longer repeats after this race (mainly because the track are still covered with snow)and then progressing to shorter reps. as the bigger races approach. I understand the point of not wanting to go anaerobic before this Saturday as I would like to race well eventhough it will be my first race in a long time. Having more of a speed background (miler in college) I always feel like I should be doing some sort of pace or rythem workout to get my legs in the "mood". Your advice is not falling on deaf ears. I will do a few 150's on wednesday but not get carried away.
Am I right to assume that after this race I should start doing longer repeats and maybe one day a week of shorter faster stuff? I have spent most of this winter only doing 6 mile tempos as my fast stuff and as of about 4 weeks ago I started to throw in 1 day a week of either 4 x 1 mile or 2 x 2 mile a little faster than my tempo pace.
I know that by going on a message board and asking for training adice is a bit of a gamble. I fully understand that if I really wanted great coaching I would work with someone who knows me best and has the ability to at least watch me workout once in a while. However, as I mentioned from the start I was very impressed in your responses to the creater of this thread. Your responses were well thought out and given with care. This is why I asked for some advice in a time where I have been doing the most training with the least amount of direction. It makes sense to not start doing intervals as this is something that once you start you typically have to continue doing. I planned on starting with longer repeats after this race (mainly because the track are still covered with snow)and then progressing to shorter reps. as the bigger races approach. I understand the point of not wanting to go anaerobic before this Saturday as I would like to race well eventhough it will be my first race in a long time. Having more of a speed background (miler in college) I always feel like I should be doing some sort of pace or rythem workout to get my legs in the "mood". Your advice is not falling on deaf ears. I will do a few 150's on wednesday but not get carried away.
Am I right to assume that after this race I should start doing longer repeats and maybe one day a week of shorter faster stuff? I have spent most of this winter only doing 6 mile tempos as my fast stuff and as of about 4 weeks ago I started to throw in 1 day a week of either 4 x 1 mile or 2 x 2 mile a little faster than my tempo pace.
Sorry! I didn't mean to send it twice.
Man, where do you live that it's still so cold and snowy. Even here in New England we're getting a good bit of melting. I don't envy your weather.
Yes, I would pretty much go with the plan you've outlined. You'll have had about five weeks of hill work after Saturday's race and then it will be about five-six weeks to the race at the end of April. That would be the time to do your interval type work. As Nobby mentioned, you'd want to go from longer, slower reps to shorter, faster ones. A session that a lot of Lydiard influenced guys used to do was two miles of sprinting for 50 yards and floating for 60.
That would be at the real end of the "short-fast" spectrum, but you don't want to go to that sort of high speed right away.
Once you hit that late April race you're done with serious training because you're looking to hammer races from there until the end of June.
Good luck on Saturday, by the way.
No worries mate. I knew you were listening, But, one of the problems on a board like this is sometimes we get questioned as to why we say something and I for one feel we need to justify what we think.
If you go to the Lydiard V Daniels thread you wil see what I mean.
It is 3:30 am here in NZ and I am still down with the flu and struggling to sleep so thought I would jump on here to beat the boredom. Will answer you query later if Nobby or HRE don't jump in first.
Whoops : Rich just beat me to it